Lesson video

Hello everyone, it's the 15th of July, 1099.

It's been four years since Urban II called for the First Crusade and surrounding the walls of Jerusalem, it's reaching a bloody violent end.

Two Christian armies surround and besiege the city but getting onto and over the defensive wall is holding them up, the fight rages on.

A battering ram beats against the wall.

Stones, arrows, even fire is thrown between the crusaders and the Muslim soldiers.

Two huge towers have been built to help scale the wall but they couldn't get close enough, then a breakthrough.

A flaming arrow starts a fire and a gap emerges.

The crusaders know this is their chance.

The tower gets closer and the Christian warriors stream over the wall and enter the city.

What they did next has never been forgotten.

Hi everyone, welcome back to our lessons on The Crusades with me, Mr Wallace.

Now over the last few lessons, we've been exploring the reasons why the crusades began and all of the difficulties and dangers and problems they faced on the way, including problems they created, some of the terrible acts that they committed and the violent sieges and battles they took part in.

This long, difficult, dangerous campaign is beginning to come to an end and in this lesson, we're going to look at what happened when they finally reached their target, their goal, the holy city of Jerusalem.

Now before we go into that, I'm just going to need to make sure you've got what you need to start this lesson.

So before we begin, making sure that you've got a pen, make sure that you've got something to write on, a book or a piece of paper, and as always, just try and make sure that you have got a hassle-free environment that you can work for a little while without being interrupted.

Once you're ready, we can begin.

All ready to go? Perfect, okay.

Hi everyone, I'm up here now.

This was a map you looked at last lesson.

So I've put up some key points on this map, which will help us understand the story so far.

We know that crusaders came from across Europe and we had three groups in particular, there were more than three, but three in particular that came from Northern France towards what we would now consider Belgium.

So that's Godfrey of Bouillon, you have Raymond of Toulouse from down here and Bohemond of Taranto.

They made their way across Europe to Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, which is the empire which asked for help.

And from here, they moved down through Anatolia.

Now the last time we encountered them in our last lesson, we were looking at the siege of Antioch and Bohemond of Taranto, the crusader who came from Southern Italy, he remained in control of Antioch and that became one of the First Crusader states.

But of course, it's not the target and nor was Constantinople.

Even though that's what the emperor had asked for help with, the Pope and the crusaders had bigger ambitions and they wanted to go to Jerusalem, the holy city, the site where Jesus Christ was crucified, where he performed so many of his famous miracles, it's Jerusalem that was the target and Jerusalem had been in Muslim hands for about 400 years.

So the crusaders who had been successful at Antioch, and if you remember, that was an incredibly famous and courageous story, it's people who are trapped and supposedly found a holy relic of a lance and inspired by this new kind of belief that God was on their side, they defeated the Seljuk Turks.

So now they have a little bit of a foothold in the holy land, but they need to get to Jerusalem.

Now this is still quite a distance, it's about 400 miles, it's about the distance in the UK from London to Newcastle.

It's no short drive, okay? This is still a decent area of land they've got to get to.

Today's lesson, we're going to focus on what happens when they get there.

They take various times on the way and ports on the way, gaining more land on the Mediterranean coast and they get to Jerusalem and we're going to look at what happened when they got there.

Before we do that, I want you should just pause in a moment and write down all the reasons that you can think of that led to this First Crusade.

Let's try and get the knowledge from the back of our minds, into the front, let's bring it fresh.

Why are these crusaders there? Why Jerusalem? Why are they even in the holy land? What has led to these groups of Christian soldiers coming from all across Europe to go to this place at this time? I've put this as a diagram like you can see on the screen, I've put three.

If you've got more than three, brilliant, that'd be really, really great if you can give me more than three reasons.

But if you try and get three, three reasons why these Christians went and joined the First Crusade, if you pause the video here and write down your three reasons, and we'll see if you've got the same ones as I come up with afterwards, okay? Let's pause.

Okay, if you are ready, I'm assuming you're going to have paused and we're ready to go through some of the answers.

Let's see some of the reasons and of course, there are more than three.

So to protect Constantinople, that's what the emperor asked for, the Byzantines felt like they were under threat, protecting Constantinople, to take back Jerusalem.

I just explained how that's such a important sacred site for Christians.

To go on a pilgrimage, many crusaders were desperate to go to some of these holy places because they are so sacred, they're so important to them and to go and feel closer to God, to go to these places, which matter so much to them, that was important too.

But you may have other reasons, so let's have a look through a few more.

Salvation, going to heaven.

If you remember, what was it that the Pope offered that he promised at the Council of Claremont? He said that anyone who went on this crusade would have their sins forgiven and they would be able to go to heaven.

Okay, so salvation, going to heaven is a key one.

For prestige and glory.

Some people would have been motivated by being a glorious warrior and by being able to be seen as more prestigious, as famous as a defender of Christianity and that prestige mattered in the Middle Ages, you could be seen as a very important noble because you've gone and defended Christians.

To increase church power.

Again, if you think back to what is motivating the Pope, why does he do more than what the emperor asked for? The emperor only asks for a few hundred soldiers to defend a city, but the Pope has gone above and beyond.

He's done more than that.

And part of the reason is he wants to make the church more powerful.

He wants to increase its reach to bring more people under his influence.

Now I'm just going to move myself so I don't overlap there.

Just going to zoom in a little bit on what the timeline is at this point, okay.

This is the late 11th century.

I'm going to assume, I think if you're doing this, you've probably done the Norman conquest and the Battle of Hastings, so you can see where that is.

The Battle of Manzikert, which we covered in our first lesson was not long afterwards.

And last lesson, we added in, the Siege of Antioch.

So you've got the council of Clermont, which launched the crusades, that's 1095, a couple of years later, the siege begins.

Today, we're going to follow this on in the year 1099.

Okay, so all of this compressed at the backend of the 11th century.

Now a question you might be wondering, and a question I regularly get asked in my own classes is how do we know all this? How do we know that this happened? So couldn't you just be making it up? Well, I could, but I'm not.

We know these things because of various pieces of evidence and we have a pretty good account because of various people who were there and what they wrote and left behind of what actually happened in Jerusalem.

Now this is always going to be influenced by their own personal opinions and loyalties to different people, but we've got a pretty good idea of the sequence of events that happened at Jerusalem in 1099.

Now Raymond of Toulouse is of those nobles and he is the person in the middle of this picture here looking very important and very holy, all dressed in white and everyone's staring at him and so on.

Now one of the people who went with Raymond of Toulouse is another guy called Raymond, clearly a very popular name.

He's called Raymond of Aguilers.

Now people who speak French might get really, really upset with how I pronounce that, sorry.

Raymond of Aguilers, now there's no picture that I could find of him.

He's not a noble, he's not important enough to have his own portrait, but he's important enough that he left behind documents.

He was a religious person.

He went with Raymond of Toulouse and his account of what happened at Antioch, at Jerusalem, is one of the things that we use to understand exactly what happened.

Now he wrote this document called a "History of the Franks who captured Jerusalem." So the people that live in what we would now call France at the time, often known as Frankish people, the Franks, and he was present there.

He was there at the capture of Jerusalem, he was there at Antioch as well.

He wasn't the only one and it's not just him that we rely on.

He's someone I'm going to talk about today, but there are other people who were there too, who also wrote down what happened and how they saw events.

And what historians would do is combine all of these accounts and just see where they match up and if there's anything which doesn't quite make sense they'd check that out and see what other sources of information.

But this is a really, really valuable prime resource, something that we can look at and really try and get an understanding of what happened.

So in today's lesson, we're going to see a couple of quotes from Raymond and it's through this that we can understand exactly how Jerusalem was taken and which takes us to the story that I told you at the start of this lesson.

When the Christians arrived at Jerusalem, what do you think they did? Have a look at this painting for a moment.

You might want to pause just to get a really close look.

You can see in the background, there are the walls of Jerusalem, here is someone pointing to them.

You can see the cross.

This is crusader flag.

What does it look like everybody else is doing? Have a close look here, pause it for a moment if you need to.

Now have you looked closely? Are these people ready to go and fight? Are these people with weapons around them, are they ready to go and take on the enemy? No, the Christians, once they saw Jerusalem, according to the reports of people like Raymond of Aguilers, they broke down and wept.

They were so overwhelmed with emotion.

They couldn't quite keep it together.

They were finally at this place that had taken them years to get to, which is the most important place in the world to them and they were overcome with emotion and they had to pull themselves together and really regroup.

And what does that tell us about why they're there? What is the main motivator? What is the thing that inspires them to be there? It's their faith.

Now it's not the only thing that inspires them to be there but this clearly shows us that it's one important thing.

Now once they get to Jerusalem and on the left, you've got a map of what Jerusalem looked like at the time of the crusades, they have a particular barrier to overcome and this is the case with all mediaeval cities, really, they have the outer wall.

And you can see here, this is a picture of the walls in Jerusalem.

Jerusalem is now bigger, so the walls don't go all the way around the city, they're inside and they've been rebuilt since then, but they follow the same route.

So these aren't exactly the same walls, but they're in the same place.

And these ancient walls would have made it very, very difficult for an attacking army to get inside.

Now if you remember, they had a problem like this in Antioch.

Can you remember how they ended the 10-month siege at Antioch? They're surrounding Antioch for 10 months.

Was it a battering ram? Did they batter in, they rammed the gates? Did they bribe a tower guard or did they starve them into surrender? How did they get past this problem in Antioch? Okay, I'm going to give you a moment to think.

I'm going to give you five, four, three, two, one.

Well remembered, it was Bohemond of Taranto, bribed a tower guard, climbed up the tower and opened the gates in the inside.

Now the defenders of Jerusalem aren't going to allow that to happen.

They're not going to be bribed, this is a sacred city.

They have to find another way in and these walls are the final barrier.

They've gone through mountainous areas, they've crossed Anatolia, they've gone through Turkish armies, they have encountered all sorts of problems and after three years of travelling and thousands of deaths and people leaving the crusade, they are finally here and the walls stand in their way.

So it's how did they get past those walls and into the city? And once they get in the city, what happens? Now this is what Raymond of Aguilers says, Aguilers, I keep on saying that wrong.

This is from his account, okay? He says, "Duke Godfrey," so Godfrey of Bouillon, "Besieged the city from the North side, "that is from the church of St Stephen "located in the centre of the city." You can see St Stephen here, St Stephen's gates.

This is where one of the crusader armies basis themselves.

"Count Raymond," that's the person he travelled with, "And his army, however, "settled down on the West and besieged Jerusalem "from the camp of the Dukes," or where the Duke's camp has been set up, "To the foot of Mount Zion," and you can see that Zion gate down here.

So they're attacking the city from this region.

Now the question is, what happened next? How did they get in? Now if you were listening closely at the start of this lesson when I explained that first picture and I introduced the lesson, you've already got a bit of an idea, but you'll learn this again in a moment when you pause the video and move on.

So at this point, I'm going to ask you to pause, wait to move on in the lesson, read through all of the information about how they got past the walls, how they got into Jerusalem and what happened when they did.

There's another couple of quotes from Raymond and there's another source that we use to understand what happened when they got inside, okay? When you've done that, and you've answered these questions in full sentences and explained yourself, come back to this video, we'll go through the answers and we'll talk a little bit more about the events inside Jerusalem, which remain controversial.

At this point, pause the video and move forward, okay? Let's go.

Okay, so I'm going to assume you've paused the video and I'm taking myself off the screen now, so we can go through the answers.

So you've paused the video, you've done the questions, you're ready to check through them.

So this is what the situation was to begin with, this is where the two armies were.

So how did they move into the city? Well, first of all, let's understand a little bit more about the battle.

What word did the crusaders use to describe the Muslim soldiers? And the acceptable answer here is Saracens.

But if you've been with me for a few lessons now, you should know by now that we don't just want acceptable answers, we want good answers, we want full sentences with detail if possible.

So a good answer would have the full sentence, the crusaders referred to the Muslim soldiers as Saracens.

So any source you read any quote, when they say Saracens, you know who they're talking about.

What discovery convinced some crusaders that God was on their side? The acceptable answer here is wood, but a good answer, the discovery of wood convinced many crusaders that God was on their side as it allowed them to build machines to get over the walls.

So if you recall, when they arrived there, they had no real plan and it was a chance discovery of wood, which they could turn into siege towers, which allowed them to move forward and many people thought that God was continuing to help them just like he helped them find the Holy Lance in Antioch.

What was built to help the crusaders get into Jerusalem? Siege towers, the crusaders built siege towers to get over the city walls.

These were 50-foot high towers which were covered so the soldiers could be protected.

They were also on wheels, so they could be moved closer to the walls.

So without these towers, this was a common thing in mediaeval siege warfare, when you're trying to take a city, towers will help you get over the walls.

How did Godfrey of Bouillon make the key breakthrough in taking the city? The acceptable answer here is he moved his siege tower.

But let's add some detail and of course, as always, this doesn't need to be word-for-word what you've got, but if you're making the same broad points, it's going to be fine.

Godfrey of Bouillon made the key breakthrough because he realised a different part of the wall was weaker and would be a better place to attack.

He moved his tower to attack this part of the wall and it was here that they were finally able to get inside Jerusalem and that's the story I was telling you at the start, that flaming arrow which caused a fire, opening up a little section of the wall for the Christian soldiers to get off the tower onto the wall and stream into the city.

According to the Gesta Francorum, so that's the other source that you read in that little document, what happened once the crusaders were inside? Now the straightforward answer, the acceptable answer is there was a large slaughter of people, but let's try and use the source itself, let's try and quote from this.

So the good answer here is the Gesta Francorum tells us that, "There was a huge slaughter "of the inhabitants of Jerusalem." It said that, "The slaughter was so great "that the men waded in blood up to their ankles." The Gesta Francorum also said that, "No one knows their number, except God." This suggests they killed a huge number that they couldn't even count.

So once they got inside Jerusalem, according to multiple sources, and these are Christians writing this saying this is what happened.

There was a huge slaughter of people, thousands died and we're going to talk about that more shortly.

Now, there was also a challenge question, a slightly more difficult one and I want you to have a think about this.

Why might some of the crusaders have believed that they only took Jerusalem because of God? Now an acceptable answer here could be because they succeeded after evasion and you could also say because God was able to help them discover this wood which they built into siege towers.

So a good answer would hopefully include both, but don't worry if you haven't included both.

If you've explained one of them, that's great, okay.

But this one does include both, so think about improving yours if you only did one of them.

Firstly, some might thank God for the discovery of wood, which helped them build siege towers.

Secondly, according to Raymond of Aquilers, there was a vision of a Bishop, who told them to perform a ceremony and praise God.

They did this and then took the city.

Many crusaders would think that God was pleased that they followed the instructions in the vision.

So that vision of the Bishop, which encouraged them to march around the city barefoot to praise God to carry these relics, they all did that and it's after this, that they took the city.

So a Christian person so convinced that God was on their side might think, "Well, we did as was asked, "it was God that helped us because we had pleased him." Now this takes us back to this picture from the start and you can see some of the things that we're talking about now.

Here is an image of a tower, you can see this trying to fight on the top of the walls.

It's not exactly what it would have looked like because the sources say the tower was covered, so the soldiers could be protected from arrows and so on.

But you can see, this is the way that the capture of Jerusalem took place, attempts to get over the wall, using towers and ladders and at the back, you've got a battering ram, which they also built.

Now let's think about this for a moment, the question we keep talking about is why did Europeans join the crusades? And if you think back to this picture, what did we say the reason was? What's motivating them? What happened when they saw Jerusalem? And if you remember correctly, they wept, they broke down, they were so overcome with religious enthusiasm and belief that they broke down.

It's faith, it's religion.

It's wanting to be in the holy city that Jesus had been central to.

Now are these the actions of people who are motivated by religion? "In the temple of Solomon men rode in blood, "up to their knees.

"The city was filled with corpses and blood.

"Our men followed, killing even to the temple of Solomon, "where the slaughter was so great "that our men waded in blood up to their ankles." Now if these people were so motivated by religion, what explains the fact that once they got inside Jerusalem, they slaughtered people on an unbelievable scale? Now these two sources both mention the temple of Solomon.

Most historians actually think that the mistake in there, that it was actually a different part of Jerusalem, possibly the Al-Aqsa mosque, a very sacred mosque in the Muslim world, but they all agree that there was a slaughter, not just of Muslim soldiers, but a slaughter of civilians, of women and children and of Jewish people in the city and as many as 30,000 if not more were then killed.

And the Gesta Francorum said that only God knew the number.

Now this is a brutal, brutal action and it has cast a shadow, it has influenced Christian and Muslim relations ever since because when the Christians arrived in this city, they carried out a slaughter so brutal that it shocked the world.

It shocked the Muslim world, it shocked many Christians.

It's hard to explain really why that happened.

Now have a look at this painting.

Does this painting look like what you just read? "Riding up to your ankles in blood "over a pile of bodies so big "that only God knew the number?" What can you see in this painting? I want you to pause the video for a moment.

I want you to have a look at this painting carefully and try and just write down two or three things that you can see in this painting and have a think, what might they be telling us? What is the message of this painting? Pause the video for a moment and just look at it carefully.

Okay, so let's just have a quick breakdown of this.

In the middle, you have this Christian soldier, that's Godfrey of Bouillon, the person whose decision really helped get into Jerusalem.

He was the one who moved his siege tower.

Think of how he's presented here, arms aloft looks like some sort of conquering or liberating hero and a liberator is someone who frees someone.

So he's come into the city, freeing the people.

Now you do have dead bodies, you do have dead, what they would call Saracens, people who were defending the city, Muslims who were defending the city.

But certainly not to the extent that was mentioned in those sources, nowhere near the number, nowhere near the amount of blood that was talked about.

In the background, you've got the dome of the rock.

This is the sacred Muslim temple, really, really important mosque, I should say.

Really, really important to stories of the Prophet Muhammad.

So we know where we are, we know we're in the centre of Jerusalem.

At the back you've got Christians beginning to wave their flag on the walls and on the towers and you can see them pulling down a flag of the Muslim defenders.

And you can see the citizens of Jerusalem here, thanking these religious figures as if they are so happy that they've been freed.

They are so relieved that the Christians have finally come and saved them.

And over here, you can see lots of injured soldiers with crosses on them representing the fact that they're Christian crusaders, all wounded, all relieved that this is over.

Now this painting doesn't necessarily reflect the quotes you just read.

So I want you to think about that again, why? Why does this painting make the crusaders look like noble and heroic Christians? Why don't you try and come up with an idea of why that might be, why the Christians who were there certainly accepted what happened? They said there was a slaughter, so why might this painting not have that information? Just pause the video and have a think about that and see if you can down an answer that might lead us in a good direction here.

Okay, so why is it painted this way? This is an interpretation of events that took place in 1099, based on the values of 1830's France.

So this is a painting from the 1830s in France about the First Crusade.

This wasn't painted at the time, it was painted hundreds of years later.

So it was painted in France based on orders from the French king and he wanted to celebrate the French nobles.

He was a King who needed the support of his nobles.

So he was trying to produce art and to make sure that these nobles knew how much he needed their support, knew that he valued them.

They thought they were special, that he thought they were great supporters of Christianity.

And as a result, it celebrates French deeds.

It celebrates what the French have done in the past, but it plays down the massacre.

You can see them here, there's triumph, there's celebration and there's death, yes, but there's no massacre.

So this is the view of one particular painter for one particular King, hundreds of years after the events took place, because he wants the French nobles on his side, because he wants to celebrate France perhaps, because he wants to celebrate Christianity, perhaps.

So the last thing I want you to do today is try and write an answer to this question and this is a tricky task.

I'm not going to lie, but I want you to really stretch yourself, really push that brain of yours and think, why do you think this painting presents the crusaders as noble Christian warriors? And try and write a longer answer to that.

Try and give me reasons based on what we've just talked about, which would help explain why this painting doesn't necessarily have the whole accurate picture of events and only tells one part of the story, okay? I'm going to ask you to pause and write an answer to this, and we'll go through a couple of ideas afterwards when we finish the lesson.

Okay, so pause the video here.

Okay, great.

So potential things you could talk about then, it was painted to please the French king.

He wanted to see France as glorious and French nobles as important so it was painted to please him.

You could also say it was painted to celebrate a part of French history.

So they wanted to make it seem more glorious.

Now many countries have done this in the past.

They want to look back at their history and think, "Wow we did amazing things "and you tend to ignore some of the things "that maybe weren't so good.

"You just focus on the good stuff." You could also say that maybe it was painted by, or, for someone who was Christian.

So wanted to show the Christians positively rather than trying to suggest they did something bad.

But what's important here though, is when we look at events in the past, we do have to try and think, if it's a book or if it's a piece of artwork or something like that, why has it been made? Now this is an interpretation of events.

This is one person's view of events and they usually have a reason why they make it that way.

So historians need to take all of these things into account, these paintings as well as these sources to get a really accurate view.

If a historian only use this painting, they would not really understand what happened at Jerusalem, but they would understand maybe a little bit about the French in the 1800s.

Okay, now you've done excellent work again, as you usually have, and this is a tricky, complex and detailed unit and today, you've done some really, really fantastic stuff on how the Christians were able to take Jerusalem.

And that's the end of the First Crusade.

But just think about its name, the First Crusade, just thinking about that alone makes us realise, well, if it's called the First Crusade, there's going to be more, there's going to be second and third and fourth and so on.

So this is the end of the first part of this crusading era.

And in the last couple of lessons in our unit, we're going to look at other crusades and think how similar and different are they, what else do they tell us about why Christians went on crusade? And as we go through them, there's going to be one or two famous individuals and famous stories that will help you understand this time period and these events a little bit more.

Now you've done excellent work.

Keep that up, Keep focusing, keep working hard.

I can't wait to see you in our next lesson and I hope you have a really great rest of the day, okay? Thanks.